Land Warming

After an awesome party for Josh's birthday with 7 people hanging out and having fun, the property now feels more like a 'real' place to settle in and live. One night of drunken debauchery, dancing around the fire made of a torch just to keep warm as the temperature dropped into single digits. One relaxed day of bushwalking, cricket, and chilling out. One night huddled inside the caravan playing made-up board games, toasty and warm with hot chai. More bbq'd meat than we all could eat.

Next trip down is in a few days, when we are planning to take all our stuff and then not go back to the city until a good reason comes along. Important tasks are to fix the driveway, finish installing the greywater trench and composting toilet, brushcutter the house site, and liaise with people to help start the clearing and groundwork for the house. Finally the real work will begin!

Digging a hole big enough for a dead body

We tried to finish the mini-greywater trench and compost toilet installation over our week visit, but partly due to rain, rain, rain and more rain, and partly due to it taking more than half that week for the caravan to get moved, we didn't get it finished. We did dig a big hole though, and found LOTS of rocks inside it. Also the compost toilet delivery was messed up in both timing, delivery address and also vital parts, so that totally was not our fault. Now we are back in the city we will need to do yet another trip to Bunnings to try and make sure that we have ALL of the little bits and pieces needed for putting all the various pipes together. Also Josh has to kick his own ass to make sure he completes the Owner-Builder Course asap, and when that is done then it is time for another trip to the bush.
     Below is the rock that Josh realised that he couldn't dig out. From the bottom of the 1.5L water bottle to the bottom of the hole is all one big rock. And I am sure that it goes further in every other direction too.

     We had the grease-trap in the pic delivered along with some other useful hardware, such as a shovel and a wheelbarrow, from the local rural supply store. The driveway was fine for their small truck but we will need to do some serious upgrading for the 2.4m wheelbase semi-trailer which the kit home will be delivered on.
     A week seemed like a long time, but the list of stuff we DID get done is a lot shorter than the list of stuff that we DIDN'T get done. The good news is that even when it is raining, it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL down there amongst the trees, and the native mice, and the baby birds - all cute and fluffy, and completely unafraid of humans! Then the sun comes out, and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Council Approval

     The wonderful council has approved our application in the shortest possible time, with no complaints or adjustments of any of our documents that we submitted - pretty amazing, since we just made the whole thing up as we went along! Josh was incredibly talented at turning my hand-drawn maps into digital maps (I love drawing maps :) ) and we basically went with the principle that there is no such thing as too much information. I just wrote lots of stuff and hoped that the council would go 'Ah, too long, can't be bothered reading all this, I'll just skim it and stamp it with APPROVED' - and apparently it worked!
     Of course before we are properly approved-approved, we still have to install the composting toilet, grease trap and greywater trench from the caravan sink, which we will be starting tomorrow, and complete the Owner-Builder course. Josh will complete the course after we get back from the property, and then it's basically time to start living on the land. We are majorly panicking at the moment at how very little money we suddenly have left after paying for the kit home, so it definitely won't be long until we are starving to death! The good news is that is just coming into that time of year in which it will be suitable to start growing our own food, so better get onto that as soon as we are there permanently, and able to keep up the watering.
     Also we need to move the caravan to a new spot on the land, so have asked the nice people that we bought the caravan off in the first place, to come round and hook it up to their 4WD. Should be a relatively straight-forward and easy task, but there IS rain forecast... And we DO have clay soil in some parts... We need to move the caravan so that is it closer to the watertank, then we can either hook it straight up with a garden hose (might taste yucky?), or just hook it up from the 100L mini-watertank which we should be having delivered on Friday. I have a plan to raise this up on a 44-gallon drum and some planks, sounds somewhat precarious but we will see! Not sure which method will give best water pressure, but we should be able to figure something out with all the bits and bobs we have assembled. Also we need to move it so that there is a suitable place to dig the greywater trench, so it is closer to the composting toilet (for those middle-of-the-night emergency trips!), and so it is closer to the big shed. The big shed is where we will be storing all of our belongings, once we get them up from Sydney. Somehow. Sometime.
     The big shed also needs us to do some work on it before that, as woodborers are in the wood and this creates a very fine yellow dust that goes all over everything. We need to treat the wood so that a) the woodborers die and b) the yellow powder stops going all over everything. I have seen a product from Bunnings which seems suitable for this application, but another thing we will need in order to do this job, is a ladder. Such a long list of things that we need!
     The good news, is here is a shovel that we found on the property, which will help with all our upcoming digging!
    

Installing toilet!

     We have been given permission from the council to install the composting toilet before the Complying Development Application has been approved, which will make the next step of being approved to live on the land in a caravan so much quicker. It should be pretty easy to install the composting toilet, as it is a self-contained unit which we just plonk on the floor and have a drain going out the wall. Also we need to install a vent pipe going out of the shed roof, it will be interesting to see how we manage to cut the hole for that to go through! I think we bought one of those old-fashioned hand-drills for other property jobs, so that should come in handy... The drain going out the wall can either go into a plastic container to catch the liquid or can drain into a trench which has slotted pipe, drain matting and gravel.
     We also have to install a greywater system for the caravan sink, which will involve a grease trap and a trench with slotted pipe, drain matting and gravel. This means lots of digging! We can't get our tools up from Sydney anytime soon so we have to buy more *sigh* The good news is that the local hardware store can source anything we want from Casino or Lismore and deliver it to us for a very small delivery fee. So now we are trying to organise and coordinate getting stuff delivered to the property while we go down there for a visit, a bit tricky since once we leave Bris it will be hard to communicate with anyone.
     Another job we need to do is try to fix the dodgy driveway a bit, just enough to make it ok for non-4WD vehicles to drive up for our deliveries! Here's hoping it doesn't rain, cos that makes the clay really slippery :( Also I want to mark the trees which we are going to get knocked down, pretty much all of the ones within the 33 metres from the house zone, but maybe we will keep just a couple, as long as they aren't close enough to fall on the house in a storm!

Council Application !

     So we had to wait OVER TWO MONTHS to get the plans from the kit-home company, if only they had told me that it would take so bloody long from the start, then I wouldn't have been on the edge of my seat the entire time. I could even have taken a holiday!!!
     But the good news is that we finally got them (had to wait a few more days while they fixed a bunch of GLARING MISTAKES such as saying that there was a fibro shack on the property, I don't know where they got that crazy idea!!!
     So the next step, put in the council application. Turns out the guy I have been dealing with is away for half a week. No worries, I will contact the other guy I have been talking to  - no wait, he is also away for half a week. Gah!!!!!!!!
     So I rang them on the day they got back, to make sure they had received my many many many emails (with even more attachments) and he said yes, he was printing them out at that very moment. :) And then he got back to me with a price for the application, which means that it is all starting to officially be processed :)
     I have this crazy notion that we won't have to wait the normal 20 days approval process because our application is quite small and simple. I am sure that will certainly lead to sadness and disappointment.
     So FINALLY we have gotten to one of the steps in the process which I thought was going to be at the very START of this whole adventure. Of course now it is time for lots of unexpected annoyances to jump up in our faces and prevent us from getting to the part that is the ACTUAL building of the house. Wish us luck!
Here's the floor plan :)

Electrickery

     We have power running along the road across the front of our block, so you would think it would quite easy to get connected - well, not when it turns out that it is High Voltage power lines. That means that we have to pay $19,000 for a transformer to be installed on the power pole by the road, and THEN pay for another pole by our front gate, trenching up the driveway, another pole next to the house, and a power box put on it. That's $25,000 according to our quote.
     I haven't even bothered getting a quote for how much it would be to have the electricity connected from the power box to the house, and all the wires, power points and light sockets put in. I have bought a couple of 'garage solar lights' from Bunnings, which is a light on a 2 metre wire to the solar panel, for only $12 it is a bargain but it is also quite dim. I have also bought a few $2 solar lights from Kmart which have been quite useful in the caravan, perfect for a bit of reading before bed. So I think we might be sticking with that system for the house proper cos it's going to turn out a lot cheaper!
     We are going to get gas set-up with those big bottles, which we can use for a gas stove and also for instananeous gas hot water. I would love to get those solar hot water evacuated tube thingys, but I don't think that would be sufficient hot water on its own, and it seems silly to pay twice for two systems that both only get partially used. I have a camp shower which I haven't tested yet, but I am sure the time will come. The hard part is finding pure sunshine on our block, cos it is covered with so many trees! I will probably also just leave some black ag pipe lying on the ground with water in it and see how warm that gets - that's a type of solar hot water!

     So we will have to figure out how to charge up the power tools we will need while building the house - we are going to get a small solar system so that we can run hubby's sleep apnea CPAP machine, the internet server, and our laptops - the most important things, so hopefully we can charge up cordless drills and what-not from that. Otherwise our neighbour has mains power, so I could ask her if we could charge up some stuff for a small fee, or better still, figure out some kind of bartering. Maybe baby-sitting, as there are two kids living there?
     The real reason that we want mains power, is that hubby is building a 3D printer, and those things use a lot of electricity, what with generating heat (that's very power hungry) and running for days continuously at a time. We heard from a local that there may be a Capital Gains Scheme which would cover most if not all of our electricity connection costs, but all of the authorities claim that such a thing does not exist. Well I will keep pursuing it, but I won't hold my breath!

The Creek

     One of the most magical things about our block is the creek. Well, less of a creek and more of a trickle or a non-permament watercourse depending on where, and whether it has rained recently or not! Definitely not big enough to go swimming in, but hopefully big enough to provide some water for the vege garden when needed! This photo was taken just after we had gotten quite a lot of rain, but a month later there were parts of the creek that were completely dry (but who knows what goes on underground?) but that is good for our circumstances because it means that we can build within 50 metres of the creek as opposed to 100 metres. If it was 100 metres then that would be off the edge of the property boundaries! We were a bit worried for a while there until the council said it would be ok, and we were wondering why they would give building permission for a block that was unbuildable!

     It seems a bit small for much wildlife to hang around, but there is one bit that has been dammed a little, and we are planning on putting some other small dam walls in around the place to try and keep some of the water around a bit longer after it rains. The neighbours upstream have quite a big dam that they go swimming in, so we know that the creek is big enough for one of those. There is one spot where a gully comes into the side of the creek which might be good for catching water. It will be hard digging though, and the block is inaccesible by machinery due to the number of trees and also the steep slope. The ground is made of a layer of rocks and then a layer of clay, so it's the worst of both worlds!
     There is a few patches of lantana around, which I am planning on removing but only after I have figured out which natives to plant to replace the dense shrubbery for the native animals :)